.@KarenDocter on the dark side of danger and romance with Killing Secrets #RB4U #MFRWauthor #RomFantasy

Patrick shifted in his seat. “I remember what I promised.” The trick was to figure out how to keep that promise without spending every spare moment hanging out his office window with his tongue brushing the ground while he waited for a glimpse of the ethereal blond, as he’d done since he spotted her last night.

On his return from Cheyenne around midnight, he’d walked out his back door to dump the garbage. He would have missed her sitting on the lounge in the shadows of his parents’ side porch if she hadn’t sighed, something low and wistful, sounding so lost. There was enough moonlight to capture the curve of her face, a riot of short honey blond curls, and the lean lines of long legs and thighs barely covered by a pair of cutoffs, stretched out to rest on the wicker ottoman.

The moment she spotted him, he knew. She stilled. Gasped. He’d felt the heat of her gaze on him. For an eternity, he kept still, afraid to scare her off. Then she slipped off the lounge and disappeared inside the house. He was left with a raging hard-on and the wild thought he’d imagined the woman, that he’d inadvertently caught sight of one of the magical fairy queens his office manager’s granddaughter insisted lived in his mother’s gardens.

A brief glimpse this morning through his mother’s kitchen window revealed Rachel James was real, and there was no question he’d keep an eye on her. Not because he’d made any rash promises to do so, but because he couldn’t seem to not watch the blasted woman. He just planned to do it from his side of the property line that separated his parents’ home from his own.

He could handle lust...from afar. If that made him a craven coward, so be it. The last thing he wanted was another needy woman in his life. He didn’t do relationships, didn’t dare step over that line again.

Whatever Rachel James’ problems might be, he'd only make them worse. He'd learned a hard lesson trying to help Karly. Broken women can't be fixed, not by him at least. He didn't rescue damsels in distress anymore. There was nothing—no one—who could induce him to stick his neck out again. Two deaths on his conscience were enough.

Karen's contemporaries are delightful, spicy romances. She loves writing about real men and women with dreams and goals that don't allow for a relationship just so she can throw them in each others path.

Her romantic suspense novels (as K.L. Docter) are also filled with romance, although the dangers the hero and heroine face are intense, usually because a serial killer is bent on ending one or both of their lives before they can fall in love.

When she's not saving her characters from death and destruction or helping them to fall in love, she loves camping and fishing with her family, reading, gardening & cooking. If she can do most of those things over a campfire, all the better! Website/Blog: karendocter.com